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Kathleen Terry

Bridgeport Telegram
Wednesday July 24, 1974

STATE COPS PROBE DEATH OF MASS< GIRL; SEE SIMILARITIES TO POCKETT CASE

Hartford (UPI) Connecticut State Police have joined the investigation into the apparent slaying of a Brookfield Mass. girl in a case that resembles that of Janice Pockett, 7, of Tolland who disappeared nearly one year ago.

Kathleen Terry, 12, was riding a bicycle around her familie's campsite in Mashapaug, Conn. when she disappeared Friday. Her partially unclothed body was found early Saturday in a wooded area about a mile inside the Massachusetts border.

The Pockett girl disappeared last July 28 while riding a bike near her home.

Like Kathleen, the Pockett girl's bike was found abandoned alongside a road. The location where the Terry girl's body was found is about 20 miles northeast of where Janice was last seen.

Connecticut State Police said recently they have been unable to question two men who are now in custody on morals charges who might provide some information into the Pockett disappearance. They said they were prevented from questioning the men because their cases on other charges are pending.

The bike, belonging to the Terry girl was found about an hour after she was reported missing shortly before 5 p.m..

Searchers found the girl's body about 9 a.m. Saturday and police said the girl appeared to have been struck on the head by a stone but there was no evidence of sexual assalt.

Hartford Conn. (UPI) Authorities have ruled out two men as possible suspects in the slaying of a Massachusetts girl and the one-year disappearance of Janice Pockett, 7, of Tolland.

Connecticut State Police, who have been working with their Massachusetts counterparts in the two cases, said Wednesday, the two men, arrested in un-related morals cases, have been ruled out in the extensive investigation that continues.

Troopers from the two states began a joint investigation because of similarities in the two cases.

The slain girl, Kathleen Terry, 12, of Brookfield, Mass., was last seen alive riding her bicycle away from the camp site her parents had set up in Connecticut at Mashapaug State Park July 19.

Her body was found the next morning off Rte. 15 about a mile inside the Massachusetts border. Police said she apparently died from a heavy blow to the head, possibly from a rock.

Miss Pockett disappeared July 26, 1973, while riding her bicycle near her home on her way to retrieve a butterfly she had placed beneath a rock. Intensive active searches and follow up investigations , with the assistance of the FBI , have failed to turn up any trace of the girl.

The distance between the Pockett disappearance and where the body of Miss Terry was found is about 20 miles.

Massachusetts state police were questioning scores of motorcyclists in the Terry case after it was learned that witnesses who passed the girl while riding her back noticed a motorcycle on the same road being driven in an "erratic" manner.